on Netflix and i can't put the guy on screen with one who would kill himself. he seemed to have fought past his ghosts and moved onto settled adult-dealing-with-it, especially in beautiful climes. there are some weird tells though. but that is second guessing.

he really hated two scoops. drags on him a lot and this was well before the campaign even.

was there a note to his suicide? don't know that i heard of anything.

Yeah, that's why I can't bring myself to even watch the end of a couple of Netflix series he did. He was a release valve for all the crazy shit going on. So when he gave up, I just can't deal with that insofar as watching his programs. Watching him delight in life and the pleasures of the senses. I just can't watch a man that understood that there were wonderful things about being alive, meeting new people, tasting new food, and STILL thought he couldn't live in this world. I just can't bring myself to be associated with that, be reminded of that if I start watching him.

is that he was in many, many ways the polar opposite of Trump. Just having him in the world was a little tonic against many things that Trump is as avatar of.

He was at least half-way comfortable with his own faults, VERY comfortable around other people, willing to acknowledge in the most public of ways when he doesn't know what the heck he's dealing with, enthusiastic in his embracing of new things, curious about others just for their own sake, empathetic by default not by exception...

looking forward to next Sunday, beginning his FINAL shows.

just can't yet.

The only tell I saw regarding his struggles, obviously in retrospect, was the episode he filmed about Massachusetts and the opioid crisis. The episode ends with him participating in an NA meeting and I was in tears after watching it, just gutwrenching.

in the months before his death.

In chronological order:

https://pagesix.com/2018/06/09/anthony-bourdain-was-regularly-suicidal-after-end-of-first-marriage/

https://pagesix.com/2018/06/09/the-troubling-signs-leading-up-to-anthony-bourdains-suicide/

https://pagesix.com/2018/06/11/rose-mcgowan-anthony-bourdain-sought-help-before-suicide/

And this:

https://pagesix.com/2018/06/25/anthony-bourdain-participated-in-death-ritual-months-before-suicide/

In one scene, a man explains the country’s religion, Bhutanese Buddhism, as something meant to remind people “time and again, not to take things too seriously. This is, in fact, an illusion.”

Bourdain responds: “Life is but a dream.

“It is considered enlightening and therapeutic to think about death for a few minutes a day,” he narrates over a shot of breathtaking mountain ranges.

In an article for CNN, “Black Swan” director Aronofsky reflected on the meaningful nature of his travels with the late chef.

“It seems ironic now that on our last day of shooting we performed a Bhutanese death ritual,” Aronofsky wrote. “We debated the fate of the country, the fate of the world. He was perplexed as to how mankind’s endless hunger to consume could be curtailed.”